Ryan Howard: Let’s Not Panic Yet

Ryan Howard has not had the most impressive start to the season. Through eight games, Howard is hitting just .212 with an NL leading 13 strikeouts. Although he says the leg is healthy, Howard has been able to muster just one home run heading into Thursday’s game.

When being asked if he’s at all worried about how he has played, as well as the team, Howard shot back a bit:

“Its 8 games,” Howard said. “You guys are trying to start a panic attack. If you wanna panic go ahead and panic, but don’t bring it around here.”

Howard also said that the team hasn’t been given enough credit.

“We’ve had a couple of mistakes here and there that have cost us games. In all actuality, we’ve actually played very well this year. I disagree with everybody else. Our record doesn’t necessarily reflect that right now.”

Can’t say I agree with his sentiment that the Phillies are playing well right now. There are phases of the game that have been better than 0thers – such as their ability to get on base – but in no way does that portend that they’re playing good ball. Their starting pitching has been up and down, their defense has been awful, and their bullpen has been downright brutal. That’s not good baseball.

Is it too early to panic? Possibly. The issue is that this team has so little room for error that panic time could be coming soon.

Sorry – I was thinking hid 8 days statement was about the Phillies. Since it’s about Howard, we can go all the way back to 2009 since he’s sucked. So considering he sat out 2012, that makes it 3 seasons and 8 games that he’s sucked

The mets are already much better than we are. They did it the right way by rebuilding. I have been saying for 2 years that we needed to rebuild, no matter how painful for us fans and now it’s too late. The rebuilding now will be much longer because Rubens way has not worked. The reasoning that you can’t rebuild in Philadelphia is nonsense because they have done it in new York amongst all those whining fans.

Stating the obvious here, but panicking doesn’t help anything. Should players panic and start pressing? Not exactly a recipe for success in any sport. Should the front office panic and sell after 8 games, when there are no buyers, or wait until July when the races heat up?

This team isn’t good enough to throw away games and give other teams so many extra outs, and still expect to be in the race in September. As someone smarter than Ryan Howard once said…you are what your record says you are. They’re 3-5 and 3 of those losses are by 5+ runs already.

Someone else already said this, but it’s not 8 games, it’s 2 seasons and 8 games. Since Sept 18, 2011, they are 161-183 (.468). They lost the benefit of the doubt midway through last year. If they were coming of a 100 win season, we wouldn’t be worried as much, but they are coming off a 73-89 season, and had a horrible spring. There’s really no reason to be optimistic.

I would submit that the 76ers have the best future of the 4 teams. It is much easier to turn over a 12 man roster than it is to turn over a 25 man roster, especially with the assets that Hinkie has already accumulated. That being said, there is a possible light at the end of this tunnel as soon as 2017 when almost every member of the current roster – the exceptions are Hamels, and Utley if the can still get the job done – will either still be under team control or gone.

Statements like these are just another example of a comfortable, non hungry professional team. We have seen it progress like this for 3 seasons. The days of these “core” guys being gamers is long passed. They are professional athletes. Would I like to see a rekindling of some fire? Sure….but I won’t hold my breath.

There is nothing wrong with Howard’s statement. I’m going to take the liberty of quoting Ken from the game day thread:

“Re Howard, funny how nary a soul assessed leadership to the guy’s quotes. What the bleep is he supposed to say? Borrow a quote from Papelbon? Get in a negative mindset as he prepares for a game? I assume the quotes are from this afternoon. No way the scribes sat on that overnight. If I’m his teammate, I’d feel better hearing/reading that. The guy is NOT stupid. He knows there’s been a lot of bad baseball of late.”

Of course, it’s not time to panic. That being said, the early schedule with an injury decimated Rangers team and a rebuilding Cubs team on the road followed by the supposedly mediocre Brewers and the rebuilding Marlins looked like an opportunity for this team to start out 7-5 or 8-4 and build some momentum. Now, with Fernandez vs. Burnett, Eovaldi vs. Pettibone and Alvarez vs. Kendrick, I would be happy if the Phils take 2 of 3 this weekend and end it at 5-7. They just don’t have the margin for error to throw away games like they’ve done already. Panic? No. Fear that the Phils will end up towards the lower end of my pre-season wins prediction (somewhere between 72 and 84 wins)? Unfortunately, yes.

Who cares what any of these overpaid ball players say? Didn’t care what Mike Schmidt said don’t care what Ryan Howard says,don’t care what Jimmy Rollins says. Only care how they play, right now they are not playing very well. I hope they start playing better and if they do , I still won’t care what they say.